Dual boot is still on the menu, too.

Recent patch notes sounded like they might be hinting at upcoming ROG Ally support, but it’s now confirmed.

  • Santo@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    I really hope Valve takes up this market with strong software. I believe Microsoft is lagging behind just using regular Windows for that.

  • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    6 months ago

    This is so exciting, very happy for Ally owners. Choice is a strength of PC ecosystem, and I’m confident SteamOS experience is going to win over many users. It’s a great upgrade.

    Edit-

    “And it’s not like Valve is suggesting it’ll offer SteamOS for rival handhelds anytime soon, either”

    Oh :( I thought this was further along than it is… got excited.

  • julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    6 months ago

    Valve shouldn’t give their blessing to SteamOS on the Ally. That should be Asus‘ job. However they could give Asus a cut on every game sold through their device on SteamOS (like a few percent). That would make it much more financially interesting for Asus and they might put an official team behind it, to support SteamOS.

      • julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        6 months ago

        Yes, thats how Open Source works or they can keep paying Windows. Asus knows their hardware much better than Valve does and has a much bigger interest in a good user experience, but currently lacks the incentive, because Windows is a „good“ paid alternative. Honestly I don’t understand all the downvotes.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 months ago

          Open source just means you can get the source code, it doesn’t mean you can take over a project.

          Asus can’t just take SteamOS, apply some driver tweaks, change some options, and release it as a SteamOS device.

          A lot of SteamOS is proprietary, and Valve of course owns all the IP related to the branding. Asus literally needs Valve’s blessing to do it.

          Asus are certainly welcome to help Valve with their code, but Valve could also say no this is our project.

          And of course they can fork the open part of SteamOS and brand it as something else, and not install steam/steamUI, but that’s half the reason people use the steam deck. It wouldn’t be SteamOS without that.

  • cum@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Hell yeah. If Valve was smart, they’d have pushed for this a lot sooner. They should focus on making it more device-agnostic. If the consumer’s device revolves around their storefront, then it’s a massive win for them.

    • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      They tried that method with the steam machines, it didnt work. A bunch of companies put out half arsed cash in versions and it went nowhere. By putting Valve’s whole weight behind one platform that they tested extensively they got a great product that has made waves. Opening it up now that it has momentum makes sense, but they absolutely made the right call making the steam deck the focus rather than making it hardware agnostic.

      • Leaflet@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Even if Valve pushed their own Steam machine back then, it would have failed miserably. It simply had terrible game support because Proton didn’t exist (or integration with wine). Only the few native linux games out there would work.

        But now Valve has Proton. I doubt the Steam Deck would have taken off if it wasn’t for that.

  • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    If Asus wants some positive PR after a rough 2024, they should offer the Ally with SteamOS preinstalled.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzOPMEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      The lower storage Deck models have been sold at a loss, with the plan of recovering that through game sales. So rival hardware running SteamOS could make valve more money than the deck does.

      It’s possible that the deck’s are no longer sold at a loss, both due to components getting cheaper over time and higher sale numbers leading to lower cost per unit. But either way the money comes mostly from game sales, not hardware sales.

      • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        I have bought more games than ever when I got the Steam Deck. Playing games on the PC can be tiring when you are 30+

        • LoamImprovement@beehaw.org
          0·
          6 months ago

          I got it for travel and it really is a top notch portable gaming hub. Doubly so because emulation is really easy to set up and run through the frontend. I love being able to play Elden Ring on the go.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    0·
    6 months ago

    How’s Linux support for the Ally? I know Valve has been doing a lot to make Linux work well on the Deck, so I kind of wonder how much extra work they need to put in to get a similar experience.

    As any Linux user with Nvidia hardware probably knows, driver support makes all the difference. Just getting the GUI on screen isn’t enough.

    • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      Bazzite is fine. It’s serviceable enough to get the job done. The hardware is supported through a bunch of different emulation tools and bespoke applications like HandHeld Daemon for hooking into power draw and managing extra buttons.

      Bazzite is based on the Holographic base that SteamOS uses, but opts for a Fedora-based immutable back-end over Arch. Running SteamOS itself is going to be better once Valve implements native support for all of these things that are covered by HandHeld Daemon, at least in theory.

      Due to the non-optimal nature of both Windows and Linux at this stage, they tend to perform about equally.

      I get that the Fediverse is disproportionately made up of Linux users, but the reality right now is just that no operating system is fine-tuned for the hardware its running on besides SteamOS and the Deck itself. It’s not better yet, but it’s getting better at a massive clip - which is above and beyond whatever Microsoft is doing (looks like nothing) to improve their software for the form factor.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
        0·
        6 months ago

        Microsoft actually recently announced modifying their game bar to be more mobile friendly. MS clearly wants handheld manufacturers to use the Xbox bar which isn’t going to happen, but they’re trying. The problem with Windows for handhelds is that the launchers are the unique selling points for most of these manufacturers, so any official Microsoft toolkit would be hidden completely if the manufacturers could have their way.

        All of those extra daemons to make Linux usable is exactly what I was wondering about. SteamOS for the Ally means nothing if they don’t build all of that stuff into their distro, preferably by fixing the drivers rather than user mode proxies patching over lacking driver support.

        • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          6 months ago

          Well, the problem is honestly just Windows. It’s not designed for mobile or touch interfaces at all, and all the telemetry and crap bloatware degrades the battery performance. If you get rid of all of that stuff it’s actually on par with the Linux equivalent.

          I dual boot my Ally and I actually spent time messing around with different OSes. ChimeraOS was not ready when I had initially given it a shot (around March) and it crashed constantly and didn’t have full support for things like RGB. I also tried Bazzite at that time and it was a similarly strange experience. It’s gotten much better in the last few months. I’ve been running Bazzlite on my Ally since early July. HHD has progressed immensely and offers a lot of good control over the device.

          If you start off with the IoT version of Windows, it comes with essentially nothing. The store app isn’t installed, but neither is Teams or Paint. You don’t actually have to spend time “debloating” it, since it comes more or less bloat-free. You actually have to spend more time installing dependencies and drivers than removing things. Run the telemetry disabling script and then you have a version of Windows that still sucks to use in general, but is much less awful on battery life.

  • BmeBenji@lemm.ee
    0·
    6 months ago

    How funny/great would it be if the PSP2 and Switch 2 ran branches of SteamOS?